The great British
scientist and Socialist, Alfred Russell Wallace, and the moderate
Socialist, Professor Anton Menger of Vienna, propose almost identical
plans of compromise with the wealthy classes,--compromises which would
perhaps result in a saving to a Socialist government and might therefore
be advisable, aside from any sentimental question of protecting or
abolishing vested "rights." Professor Wallace, objects to "continuing
any payments of interests beyond the lives of the present receivers and
their direct heirs [now living], who may have been brought up to expect
such inheritance." For if we were to compensate any others, Wallace
points out that we would be "actually robbing the present generation to
the enrichment and supposed advantage of certain unborn individuals, who
in most instances, as we now know, are much more likely to be injured
than benefited."[293] Professor Menger proposes that, in exchange for
property taken by the government from owners of large fortunes, there
should be allotted to them, and their descendants now living, a modest
annuity "sufficient to satisfy their legitimate needs," as being more
reasonable than Wallace's plan of such an income as they were "brought
up to expect."[294] But in the long run the difference between the two
methods would be immaterial--and the one chosen would doubtless depend
on the social or anti-social attitude assumed by the wealthy. In either
case there would be no unearned incomes in any generation not yet born.
On the other hand, it is perfectly possible that a Socialist Party which
had seized the reins of political power might, through motives of
caution and self-protection, use greater severity against those of the
capitalists whom they thought had played an unfair part in the welfare
against the installation of the new government. It is scarcely to be
doubted, for instance, that those capitalists who tried to embroil us in
foreign wars in order to prevent the establishment of social democracy
would probably be exiled and their property confiscated. Certainly these
measures would be employed against all such persons as had counseled or
participated in the suspension of civil government or other violent
measures.

But where will the money come from even for the payment of such limited
compensation as the Socialists decide upon? Assuming that the stocks and
bonds of the railways and other large businesses were paid for at the
cost of reproduction, or, let